How Much Money Does Medical Tourism Companies Make Money

A few years ago, Katelyn O'Shaughnessy was vacationing in Ireland when she brutal, cutting her knee and had to get stitches at the hospital. When the beak came, it was only $30.

"I couldn't believe how cheap it was," O'Shaughnessy said.

Afterward that, she started researching medical tourism.

"I saw information technology equally not only a fast-growing, untapped market but also a feasible option for Americans who just couldn't afford the healthcare being offered here," she said.

Katelyn O'Shaughnessy

Enter Doctours, O'Shaughnessy'southward startup, which connects patients with doctors and clinics away for medical procedures. It pays agents 5% commission when a client books a medical process.

Other medical tourism facilitators exist, just O'Shaughnessy said Doctours' unique offering is its business-to-business concern component for travel agents.

She'due south no stranger to the bureau community. O'Shaughnessy was the founder of itinerary direction app TripScope, which was sold to Travefy in 2017. In fact, it was while she nonetheless owned TripScope that she noticed the trend of Americans interested in going abroad for medical procedures.

Each 24-hour interval, she would review itineraries agents sent to their clients. Sometimes they had holes. She would reach out to the agent to offer them a heads up, but found the holes were intentional.

"They'd exist like, 'Oh, well, actually they're going to be in the hospital those two days,'" O'Shaughnessy said.

It kept coming up so often that O'Shaughnessy herself worked equally an agent, facilitating medical tourism for awhile subsequently selling TripScope.

"I built this network of doctors and was able to become a commission on the medical procedures," she said. "And I was like, 'Whoa! This is a lot of money, much more than I'g making with these hotels.' And so from there, I just grew it."

Doctours operates at both a business concern-to-consumer and business-to-business level. Consumers tin can visit its website and enter the medical procedure they want (Doctours offers 330). A list of doctors who perform the procedure pops upwardly, as does pricing; O'Shaughnessy said transparent pricing is important.

For instance, a search for a hip replacement brought up iv doctors, 3 based in Mexico and ane in Croatia. Their prices ranged from $7,900 to $22,000. The search results likewise list how many hip replacements each doctor has performed and the languages they speak.

Consumers can contact the doctor or click a link to his or her profile, which includes details on education and background, data virtually their hospital (including pictures) and more.

"We don't have just any doctor," O'Shaughnessy said. "They accept to go through a very strict process to exist on our platform, and then people tin then have access and know, 'OK, this is a doctor who checks out,' and I experience a little bit more confident in their determination to travel abroad."

All agents can piece of work with Doctours, she said. They can be as involved as they or their client desire -- potentially sending the client a list of the doctors who perform a process -- or they can just mitt clients off to Doctours. Either fashion, they will get a five% commission on the procedure (Doctours takes its own cut for performing the service, simply agents always get 5%).

"I'm glad nosotros can make it transparent and brand information technology accessible [to agents]," O'Shaughnessy said of medical tourism. "That's really what we want to practice -- and make the travel agents money. I'grand always looking out for travel agents."

Medical tourism has traditionally been an expanse nigh agents have shied abroad from because of the potential liability issues it presents. However, Doctours has limited liability considering it is simply facilitating the connection between doctor and patient, O'Shaughnessy said.

"We do pre-vet [doctors], so we do everything in our power to mitigate whatsoever risks," she said. "Simply with that said, ... when we're connecting the two, we never recommend, we never diagnose."

Doctours does accept employees who are knowledgeable in healthcare and tin can walk patients through what they might expect with certain procedures. For example, the company's chief medical officeholder is a physician. But at the end of the twenty-four hours, Doctours simply facilitates medical travel.

Industry lawyer Marking Pestronk, also Travel Weekly'south Legal Briefs columnist, said O'Shaughnessy's model holds upwards legally.

"The way to look at the outcome is this: Are at that place court precedents that establish a duty of intendance for companies that simply give out doctors' contact info?" he said in an e-mail. "I accept never heard of such a precedent, and so I would say that the answer is that it flies from a legal standpoint."

To date, Doctours has facilitated more than 500 medical procedures. The about popular at the moment are stalk prison cell treatments, which are not available in the U.S., for everyone from professional athletes to people with Parkinson's disease. She estimated those treatments cost $12,000 to $50,000. Breast augmentations, running around $7,000, are likewise big sellers.

Medical travelers save anywhere from xxx% to 80% on procedures compared with U.Due south. prices, O'Shaughnessy said.

Mexico is the top destination considering of its proximity to the U.Southward. Medical travel to Latin America, including Brazil, Republic of colombia, Panama and Costa Rica, is also popular.

Medical tourism presents agents with a number of opportunities. For 1, the sector is growing. Citing the American Journal of Medicine, O'Shaughnessy said that in 2017, an estimated 1.4 meg Americans traveled internationally for medical care. That is expected to rise by 25% this year.

And travelers who are receiving medical procedures tend to stay in a destination longer than the average leisure traveler, according to O'Shaughnessy, leading to higher commissions on hotels. The average trip length is one to four weeks, and their spend is iv to six times greater than that of a typical tourist.

"At that place is a huge opportunity for the travel manufacture to get a slice of this pie," she said.

O'Shaughnessy plans to keep to grow Doctours.

"Actually, what we see is substantially being the market leader in the American market place for medical tourism," she said. "Retrieve of us like an Angie's List, where instead of searching for a plumber, y'all're finding doctors. When people call back medical tourism, I want them to call back Doctours."

Source: https://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-News/Travel-Agent-Issues/Doctours-offers-agents-healthy-income-from-medical-tourism

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